A bill now before the R.I. House would raise Rhode Island’s minimum to $10 and hour by 2016, and tie it to inflation beginning in 2017.

With a stroke of his pen, Gov. Dannel Malloy has set Connecticut on a path to have the highest minimum wage of any state in the nation. At the end of a three-year phase-in, Connecticut will have a minimum hourly wage of $10.10 — the figure that President Obama has asked Congress to set nationally, but which many congressional Republicans oppose.

Malloy, a Democrat, signed the legislation Thursday evening in the same New Britain diner where he appeared this month with the president and three other New England governors: Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, Peter Shumlin of Vermont and Rhode Island’s Governor Chafee. All are Democrats who have pushed to raise the minimum wage in their states.

“This is just a step in moving people in the right direction,” Malloy said. “We will be lifting people out of poverty in the state of Connecticut. Increasing the minimum wage is not just good for workers; it’s also good for business.”

Connecticut Speaker of the House Brendan Sharkey, also a Democrat, said: “Raising the minimum wage helps people who need it most, is good for the economy and is the right thing to do.”

But state House Republican spokesman Patrick O’Neil said his party opposed the measure because his party does not believe the bill will help create jobs in a state with an unemployment rate of 7.2 percent, above the national average.

“This is just politics in an election year and isn’t going to lift anyone out of poverty,” O’Neil said. Malloy is seeking reelection this year.

Rhode Island Democrats have mounted a similar push to raise the minimum wage in Rhode Island. A bill now before the House would raise Rhode Island’s minimum to $10 and hour by 2016, and tie it to inflation beginning in 2017.

“If you put more money in people’s pockets, they spend, which is good for the economy,” state Rep. David Bennett, the Warwick Democrat who introduced the proposal, said last month in testimony before the House Labor Committee.

Opponents testified that another increase in the minimum wage would hurt local companies and job seekers with the fewest work skills and least experience.

“The higher the minimum wage goes, the harder it is going to be to hire people into the industry and let them move up the ladder,” said Lenette Boisselle, speaking for the Rhode Island Hospitality Association, an organization that represents hotels and restaurants.

“We wish we could say go to $20 [an hour], but the reality is you just can’t hire people in that environment.”

Rhode Island’s minimum wage rose from $7.75 an hour to $8 an hour on Jan. 1. The rate in neighboring Connecticut will rise from $8.70 per hour now to $9.15 in January 2015, to $9.60 in January 2016, and then to $10.10 in January 2017.

The Congressional Budget Office said in a report released in February that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour nationally would reduce total employment by some 500,000 workers. The current highest state minimum wage in the United States is Washington’s $9.32, above the $7.25 federal minimum.

Mr. Obama’s call for a higher national minimum wage has failed to win the backing of the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives.